Cannabis History in Images — A Visual Timeline

Key figures, propaganda, counterculture landmarks, reform milestones, and the plant itself — cannabis history told through images.

Cannabis history spans twelve millennia and six continents. These images — key figures, propaganda artifacts, counterculture landmarks, reform milestones, and the plant itself — tell the story that the text documents in full.

Key Figures

Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975)

FBN Commissioner, 32 years — built federal cannabis prohibition

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)

Beat poet, Howl, LeMar founder — "Pot Is a Reality Kick"

Dennis Peron (1945–2018)

Father of medical cannabis — wrote Proposition 215

Dennis Peron, 2008

"All marijuana use is medical"

Brownie Mary (1922–1999)

Baked hundreds of cannabis brownies a week for AIDS patients

Harvey Milk (1930–1978)

Peron's ally — Prop W passed three weeks before his assassination

Jack Herer (1939–2010)

The Hemperor — The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam (1930–2023)

Isolated THC (1964), discovered anandamide (1992)

Weldon Angelos

55-year sentence for $350 in marijuana sales — pardoned 2020

Steve DeAngelo

Co-founded Harborside, one of the first licensed dispensaries

Ed Rosenthal

"The Guru of Ganja" — cultivation pioneer and DEA target

Billie Holiday (1915–1959)

Anslinger pursued her as a personal target — she died under arrest

Timothy Leary (1920–1996)

Leary v. United States struck down the Tax Act in 1969

Fitz Hugh Ludlow (1836–1870)

Author of The Hasheesh Eater — dead of tuberculosis at 34

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951)

28 daily papers — sensationalist anti-marijuana headlines

Nixon meets Elvis, December 1970

The drug warrior and the pill-addled King — White House photo

Prohibition & Propaganda

Reefer Madness (1936)

Exploitation film — Anslinger tried to suppress it

Reefer Madness title card

Also known as Tell Your Children, The Burning Question, Dope Addict

Marihuana Tax Act stamp

$1/oz authorized, $100/oz unauthorized — effective October 1, 1937

The law as weapon

Two hours of hearings, 92 seconds of House debate

Cannabis and the law

Racial panic, bureaucratic ambition, and sensational propaganda

Marihuana (1936) — Dwain Esper

"The Devil's Weed" — exploitation cinema from the prohibition era

She Shoulda Said No! (1949)

Starred Lila Leeds, arrested with Robert Mitchum for marijuana in 1948

Medicine & Pharmaceuticals

Cannabis Indica — USP 8th Revision

Fluid Extract by American Druggists Syndicate, 60% alcohol, under Food & Drugs Act 1906

Eli Lilly Cannabis Extract

One of ~280 manufacturers producing 2,000+ cannabis medicines by the 1930s

War on Drugs

Mandatory minimums

2–5 years for a first cannabis offense under the Boggs Act (1951)

Enforcement

6.1 million marijuana arrests, 2010–2018 — 90% for possession

Cannabis prisoners

Richard DeLisi: 31 years. Michael Thompson: 25 years. Weldon Angelos: 55-year sentence.

Racial disparity

Black Americans arrested at 3.64× the rate of whites (ACLU 2020)

Collateral consequences

Housing, employment, education, voting rights — long after the sentence

Drug testing

Reagan's escalation: workplace testing, DARE, "Just Say No"

DARE in schools

The program every meta-analysis found did not work

Nancy Reagan — "Just Say No" rally

Longfellow Elementary, Oakland, 1982 — 100,000 miles, 55 cities, 28 states

Reagan signs the Anti-Drug Abuse Act

October 27, 1986 — mandatory minimums, 100:1 crack disparity, cannabis thresholds

Counterculture & Places

Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco

Summer of Love, 1967 — the capital of cannabis-inflected utopianism

Haight-Ashbury intersection

Jefferson Airplane at 2400 Fulton, Grateful Dead at 710 Ashbury

The Castro, 1970s

Dennis Peron's "Big Top" marijuana supermarket at 715 Castro

Harborside, Oakland

One of the first licensed dispensaries in the United States

U.S. Capitol

The MORE Act passed the House twice. It never reached a Senate vote.

Reform & Legalization

Cannabis activism

From NORML's 1970 founding to the legalization wave

Ballot initiatives

Colorado and Washington, November 6, 2012 — 55% each

Legal dispensary

Lines around the block — Colorado, January 1, 2014

Medical cannabis card

20 states and D.C. by 2012, 40 states by 2026

Federal reform stalled

SAFE Banking passed the House seven times. Not once enacted.

Tax revenue

Billions flow annually into state general funds

The patchwork

24 states + D.C. with adult-use legalization, April 2026

State cannabis laws map

The state-by-state legalization ledger

International

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Coffeeshop tolerance policy since the 1970s

Canada

First G7 nation — Cannabis Act took effect October 17, 2018

Uruguay

First country to legalize — Law 19.172, December 2013

Germany

Cannabisgesetz took effect April 1, 2024 — cannabis social clubs

Thailand

First Asian country to effectively legalize — then reversed course

Mexico

Banned cannabis in 1920 — seventeen years before the US

The Plant & the Science

Cannabis sativa L.

One of humanity's oldest cultivated plants — ~12,000 years

Hemp field

Six thousand years of cultivation, eighty years of needless suppression

Trichomes — macro

Mechoulam isolated THC from these resin glands in 1964

THC molecule

Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol — identified by Mechoulam & Gaoni, 1964

India

The Atharva Veda names bhaṅga as one of five sacred plants

Jamaica

Indian indentured laborers brought gāñjā beginning in 1845

Morocco

The Islamic world's hashish culture — Ibn al-Baytār, 1248

Modern cultivation

The 2018 Farm Bill made hemp a legal agricultural commodity again

Emperor Shennong — Han Dynasty mural

The mythical emperor. The "2737 BCE" date is legendary, not historical.

The Spanish Armada, 1588

50–100 tons of hemp rope per warship — naval power ran on cannabis fiber

Image sources & rights

Images on this site are used for educational purposes. Historical photographs of public figures are sourced from public-domain archives, press photography, and Creative Commons–licensed sources. Propaganda materials (Reefer Madness posters, tax stamps) are public domain. Location and subject photographs are licensed stock imagery or CC-licensed work.

For the complete primary-source inventory — including public-domain films, government documents, and archival collections — see Primary Sources & Archives.